It might not be life or death important, but given that we're all curious cats, it is important for following (and by no means is the list exhaustive) it could be "important":… 1. Analysing the motion of Jupiter which helps in analyzing a lot of it's properties as well. 2. Makes for useful data when launching exploratory satellites to gather information about Jupiter.

Jupiter's orbit is elliptical, which means sometimes it is closer to the Sun than at other times. The closest Jupiter gets to the Sun is referred to as Perihelion, and at it…s furthest Aphelion. The mean is called the semi major axis. Aphelion: 8.63081601 × 10-5 light years Perihelion: 7.82803632 × 10-5 light years SM Axis: 8.22942617 × 10-5 light years As you can see, light years are not a very good unit for measuring Jupiter's distance from the sun, since light takes well under an hour to make the trip from the Sun to Jupiter. The units scientists use to measure the distance between the planets and the sun are AU's or Astronomical Units.